iGEM ACS Synthetic Biology Special Issue to be published in 2014

We're excited to announce a collaboration between the iGEM Foundation and ACS Synthetic Biology. We have created a special issue to allow iGEMers to publish their work in a journal article filled entirely with iGEM projects. We are working with ACS to publish the issue later this year.

The iGEM competition encourages students in teams to come up with creative and novel ideas that they can develop over the course of a summer. The structure of our competition teaches students lab work, scientific communication, standards in synthetic biology, teamwork, project management and many other skills.

We require teams to make wikis, presentations, posters and parts, all of which the judging team will assess during our Jamboree. However, the majority of scientific communication takes place through publications. We don’t require teams to submit publications as part of their evaluation.

In order to help out teams with their continued education in synbio after the Jamboree is over, we chose to work with the American Chemical Society Synthetic Biology journal to give students the opportunity to publish their work.

iGEM teams often have amazing, creative far reaching goals for their projects. However, teams don’t always achieve what they set out to accomplish. Taking this into account, we worked with ACS to create a viewpoint format for articles that allow teams to report what they achieved, no matter how big or small the result.

By creating a publication format that allows for small articles, iGEMers can submit their 2013 project work without significant further work or writing. We know iGEMers are really busy with classes and exams, so this format was selected to allow easy translation of wikis and presentations into written articles.

This ACS special issue will allow iGEM work to be citable and aggregates most of the publications from the 2013 competition into a single source. Our ACS issue is peer-reviewed, giving both students and their advisors a piece of work that will contribute to their career publication record. It will also be open-access, allowing everyone to read about iGEM work without the need for an institutional journal subscription.

We hope this collaboration with ACS gives iGEMers another opportunity to continue their synbio work and puts them on the path to a career in synthetic biology. We received many submissions and we’re very excited to publish our issue later this year!

In summary:

iGEM ACS Special Issue

Open-access

Peer-reviewed

Viewpoint format short articles

Published later in 2014

Check back soon as we will announce more details when they become available.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact ACS [at] iGEM [dot] org.

iGEM Foundation

Dedicated to education and competition, advancement of synthetic biology, and the development of open community and collaboration.